Paid Partisans, Biased Bloggers — Their Place in the Newsroom

Last week, The Plain Dealer suspended its political blog, Wide Open, after learning that two of its contributors had donated money to political campaigns. The blog — which was the idea of Jean Dubail, assistant managing editor/online — will likely be re-introduced in a few weeks with new bloggers, under the agreement that they can support campaigns but not get paid, Goldberg said.

Susan Goldberg“Our mistake in looking at this in hindsight was in paying people. Just like when we hire a freelancer to review a play, we would never hire somebody who was an investor in the theater production," Goldberg said during a phone interview. "We can’t have people on our payroll who won’t play by our rules.”